Start singing “Andy Pandy’s coming to play” and a generation will join in with “la, la, la-la, la, la”.
We are 60 now, but Andy in his blue and white pyjamas makes me a time traveller.
I’m sitting on the floor at my mother’s knee at lunchtime, watching the black and white television with a screen the size of a postage stamp and singing along to “Here we go looby loo, here we go looby light.”
Simple pleasures, ba bop de wop Bill ‘n Ben?
Not that I ever loved Mr Pandy. But I did love Trumpton – remember the fire crew: Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb.
When we were all in a student house in our late twenties, a friend rang and one of my housemates picked up the phone, answering in a deep voice: “Trumpton 452.″ Quick as a whip, the caller shot back: “Is Windy Miller there?”
The cartoons of so long ago still enchant. I watched a very old Dr Who recently. It was obvious that the monster was a man in a shaggy rug. Back then, we were very afraid.
Cartoons played large in our weekends – we didn’t have TV controls, but whoever got down first took charge of the twiddler knob at the back of the set that stopped the picture spinning.
Remember the Banana Splits? We were in the shopping centre the other day and I said to my other half: “That man’s the spit of Fleegle.” He got it.
Saturday mornings meant The Flashing Blade and White Horses and Robinson Crusoe. Dubbed television was exotic.
Belle and Sebastian triggered a love for the French language – even the shopping list sounds sexier in French. Robinson Crusoe triggered a love of empty beaches and Man Fridays.
An article in The Guardian set me off on this trip down memory lane to a world where the Wombles of Wimbledon picked up the litter and the Clangers made a lot of endearing sounds but no sense.
Some of those much-loved puppets have gone missing.
Guardian writer James Tapper began his feature with the words that are so familiar: “Are you sitting comfortably?”
He informs us that while Bagpuss is, someone has nicked Mother Clanger and no-one quite knows where Dougal got to.
The Wombles haven’t been seen for years. The only one accounted for is Great Uncle Bulgaria – which makes sense as he always was a wise old boy, even with a tea cosy on his head. The thing is I always thought he was in a wheelchair... not sure why.
James interviewed Daniel Postgate, son of the great Oliver Postgate who, along with Ivor Wood and Peter Fermin, produced some of the best puppet shows.
It wasn’t all glamour. Daniel said the Clangers was filmed in a barn shared by several families of starlings. His dad had to mop up the bird poo every morning before filming.
There was a scene where the soup dragon had a gold chocolate coin in her hand. His dad came in to find that the mice had eaten the coin and half the poor soup dragon’s hand as well.
No-one knows where the baby soup dragon is any more; somebody stole Mummy Clanger and Emily Firmin sometimes come upon bits of Planet Clanger when she digs over the garden.
The Herbs ended up in a box in an accountant’s office: I’ll do you a touching rendition of “I’m Bayleaf I’m the gyardener (sic),” at the drop of a long-handled spade.
The stories of lost puppets touched my heart. They are what made childhood magical.
Roll on a few years and my son sat at my knee as Aunty Mabel (Nurse Gladys Emmanuel to you) took to the skies with Pippin the dog.
These days I still sing “Here we go looby loo” but that’s usually when life doles out lemons.